Ed and Winry Oneshots
by bookwormwithanattitude
Summary: Several Ed/Winry one shots, though none of them are explicitly romantic, the subtext is there. UPDATE: Fourth Chapter. Al and Winry find out about the time Ed got impaled by Kimblee. includes hot cheek kissing action.
1. Care

A/N: Inspired by a pic by Baileyley I saw on Deviantart of the same title: art/Care-292743753

"It's because you stayed up all night doing that automail," Ed admonished.

"Uh huh," Winry moved Ed's hand off her forehead. She was sweating through her sheets, and it hurt to talk, yet her annoyance with Ed pushed through that pain. "What a scientific conclusion. I don't think you remember that I did all-nighters for you all the time not so long ago?"

Ed looked a little guilty at this. Good.

"Are you going to leave anytime soon?" Winry said.

Ed narrowed his eyes. "Why are you so eager to get rid of me?"

"Because you're hovering!" Winry croaked, pulling her covers up.

"Yeah, because I know if I leave you alone for a minute you'll sneak out and start working again," Ed spat.

"So what?"

"So what? You're sick. You can't work!"

Winry laughed, but it came out more like a cough. "Yeah, I'll bet you've NEVER worked when you're sick."

"Yeah, well I don't have a job anymore," Ed said, crossing his arms.

"Oh great, you can't do alchemy, so now your purpose in life is to sit around and bother me," Winry sighed. "If you're so worried about recovery, why don't you go help your brother who's still getting used to having his body back?"

"Because all three of us should be together right now!" Ed snapped.

Winry blinked. Ed flushed, apparently just as surprised by what he had said as she was. "What I mean is…"

Winry put her hand over his. "I get it. You guys just got back, we're finally all healthy and whole, and I just have to go and get sick. Sorry."

"It's not.." Ed stammered a little, looking down.

"I promise I'll be better soon, okay? You guys pulled through for me, so I'll pull through for you."

Ed nodded, still blushing furiously. Winry smiled and sank back into her pillows. She closed her eyes and let her ailing body settle down, and eventually fell asleep holding Ed's hand.


	2. Burden

Ed wandered into the living room, yawning. He jumped when he saw Winry sitting at her work table, arms crossed.

"What are you still doing up?" he raised his eyebrows.

"All packed?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

Winry scowled at him. "No, you're not. " She threw a bottle of polish at him and he caught it in surprise. "You need this for maintenance. Were you seriously going to leave it behind? Are you planning to take care of my automail at all?"

Ed rolled his eyes. "It was an oversight, okay."

"Sure."

They glared at each other for a minute. It was Ed who broke the gaze first, looking down at his feet grumpily.

"So when are you two leaving tomorrow?" Winry asked.

"Early."

"How early?"

"I'm getting up around four. You don't have to get up, you know. I don't like goodbyes."

"Goodbyes are part of leaving a place. If you can't handle a goodbye, you aren't ready to go off on your own."

Ed snorted. "Who are you to decide when I can go off on my own? Acting like you're my…" he trailed off.

Another awkward silence.

Winry bit her lip. Now or never. "Should I come with you?"

Ed stared at her. "What?"

"I'm worried you won't take care of your automail if I'm not there to maintenance it!" Winry snapped

Ed laughed. "You're obsessed. Machine freak." He turned away from her and began to walk back to his room.

"Ed."

He stopped, stiffening at the tone of her voice. She stood up, bracing her hands on her worktable, staring directly at his back.

"I'm serious. I-"

I'm afraid the second your backs vanish from my sight, you'll never come back.

She couldn't say it.

"I'm afraid you and Al will do something crazy! You do crazy things when I'm not around!" Things that tear you apart and next thing I know you're on my doorstep covered in blood and I can't recognize either of you anymore- "You'll probably piss off the Fuhrer or something, and next thing you know you'll have gotten arrested and they'll be dragging me and Granny to jail to bail you out!"

"Ha, you two are too cheap to be relied on for that!"

Stop trying to laugh this off.

"Someone has to clean up after you."

"This is our business, don't butt in! I don't need a babysitter!" Ed spun around.

"I think you obviously do!" Winry spat.

Her eyes were burning a little. Tears of anger, obviously, it had to be. She closed her eyes to hold them back She couldn't cry in front of him right now, he'd just make fun of her like always.

"Winry…"

His voice sounded different, softer.

"You really don't want to throw your life away for us. We're going to be traveling all the time. You wouldn't be able to really work on automail. There's no mechanics in the central areas. Are you really going to leave behind the clients you have here?"

"They're not really my clients. Granny made their automail, not me. You're…you're my first…" Winry couldn't open her eyes, she felt like all the tears would spill out.

"Yeah, and Granny needs you. You're really going to leave her alone?"

Winry's felt like she'd swallowed a rock, the lump in her throat was so painful. She sat down hard in her chair, eyes still closed. Like Ed could talk about leaving people alone. But it hurt to imagine Granny in this empty house. And…Granny could die too, if Winry took her eyes off her.

"This isn't your burden to bear, anyway," Ed sighed.

Like hell it's not.

"Do whatever you want, then," Winry muttered, slowly opening her eyes. She looked directly at him, her gaze stony.

Once again, he was broke eye contact. He turned, leaving her to stare at his back. "Look, if I have any problems with the automail, I'll come and see you about it."

"You'll have to."

"His shoulders slumped a little. "Well, I'm going to bed. Good night."

"Night," she sighed. "Look… The automail…Don't wait until it's completely broken. Call ahead if anything's weird with it."

"Sure. I'll do that." He shuffled off.

"Liar," she said when he was out of earshot.

The word seemed to echo around the room. The house felt emptier already. She sighed, picked up a screwdriver and set to work.

He's right, anyway. Who wants to go somewhere where there's no mechanics.


	3. Pick Up the Pieces

"So, I see Al's helmet is in pieces, " Winry said shortly as she reattached Ed's arm.

"Yeah…some stuff happened," Ed said with a pained frown. "I should be able to put it together after you fix my am. The sooner the better. I don't like his blood seal being out in the open like that."

"And you're not going to tell me what happened."

Ed shrugged his non-mechanical shoulder. "What's the point? It's over. I'm not going to let it happen again."

"The point." Winry had to restrain herself from punching Ed in the face. She stopped working on his automail and crossed her amrs, her wrench dangling in her right hand. "Well, let's see. The point is, how the hell do you think you're going to stop it from happening again if we don't come up with a plan? What if next time it's not Al's helmet that shatters, but the armor just a little lower?"

Ed's face flushed. "Shut up! Don't say things like that!"

"I'll say them because it's true," Winry said. She felt sick to her stomach talking about it, but she had to force it out.. "What's the the point of going on a journey to get your bodies back if it kills Al in process?"

Ed's lip trembled a little. "It won't happen. I'll protect him no matter what."

"Yeah, unless someone breaks your automail. Then you're pretty much helpless," Winry sighed. "It was alchemy that caused his helmet to shatter like that, right? I don't really see what else could have done it."

"So what if it was?"

"You know," she said harshly. "I'm starting to think the best way to really protect Al is to refuse to repair your arm so you can't do alchemy and you guys won't be able to put yourselves in danger again."

She thought Ed was going to scream at her. His face was tomato red, his eye was twitching and his shoulders were tensed. Then suddenly his whole body slumped.

"Maybe you're right."

Winry was taken aback by this. "What?

"I…I wonder sometimes too. But I can't leave him like this, Winry. You know…you know what's it like for him to be trapped in that body. I don't know what else I can do,"

Winry's stomach sank a little. This was the closest he'd ever gotten to truly discussing the path he'd chosen with her, and suddenly she was a little scared.

"It's fine…" She picked up her wrench and started repairing Ed's arm again. "Don't give up. I-I know this is the only way to help him and I know you want to protect him… but I just wish you'd remember…I want to protect Al too. We used to protect him together, all the time. Remember his first day at school?"

Ed smiled. "Yeah. All the older kids always picked on the little ones. And Al got in trouble for trying to bring a cat he found into the classroom…all the kids our age were ganging up and giving him a hard time about it…but they ran from the hills as soon as we came after them."

"They ran from the hills as soon as they say my wrench. Nobody was scared of you. You were so terrible at fighting before you trained with Ms. Izumi, you were always trying to be cool…remember that time you tried to spin around and punch that kid and ended up punching yourself in the face?"

Ed's antenna quivered in embarrassment. "I could rip that kid apart now! And don't act so high and mighty just because everyone was scared of your wrench. I could have had an excuse to bring a weapon to school too if I'd thought to try and start a stupid "shop' club nobody ever went to."

Winry's face heated up at this, and she waved her wrench at him threateningly. "Al went!"

"Yeah, out of pity."

Winry decided to let it go. "Anyway, my point is, you're not the only one who wants to look after Al."

Ed's expression softened. "I know that. But you do look after him…and me… a lot. We really depend on you. I just don't want to burden you more than I already have."

Winry huffed loudly. "That's what I'm trying to explain! Al's like a little brother to me too, okay? So it's my burden already! I want to help too! You don't have to take this on alone!"

"Yeah, I know. And you're a lot better at your job than I am at mine. So just…I don't want to keep you from doing that job by loading you down with all the shit I'm supposed to be handling," he said, gesturing at his automail. "So…just fix me up please? So I can help him."

Winry shook her head wearily. He just wasn't going to get it, no matter how hard she tried.. She cranked the wrench town hard, reconnecting the nerves. Ed yelped.

"There. Just like you asked. Now go take care of Al."

She expected him to yell at her for not warning him, but instead he just rubbed his shoulder. "Yeah. Thanks. Really."

He toddled off to help his brother, and she sat there alone.

She was so, so tired. Why couldn't he understand how much harder it was for her to pick up the pieces if he wouldn't even tell her what was broken anymore?


	4. A Full Life

"Hey!" Ed cried out a little as Winry felt his newly restored arm. "What the heck are you doing?"

"It still feels really scrawny. Are you doing your exercises right?"

"Of course I am. Why do you never ask Al about his exercises?"

"Because Al's Al and you're you."

"What's THAT supposed to mean?"

Winry knew that he knew exactly what it meant, so she ignored the question. She let go of Ed's arm and leaned against the kitchen counter, examining Ed thoughtfully as he "hmmph"ed and continued to chow down on his sandwich.

"Y'know, I have a question that's been bugging me. When you got your arm back, did the automail embedded in your shoulder magically disappear or something?"

Ed paused in his eating. "Ah, no. They removed it at the hospital though."

"Really?" Winry bit her lip in concern. "Okay, take off your shirt."

Ed spat out a mouthful of sandwich, spraying it all over the kitchen table.

"WHAT?" he gurgled.

"Eugh. Clean that up. I want to check to see if they removed the automail right, stupid."

"Of course they did it right, what are you talking about?"

"Don't give me that. It was a military hospital in Central right? They don't even know how to deal with automail over there. We have horror stories about Central surgeons in Rush Valley. A customer had to get her automail removed by one of them, they did it all wrong and she got a BAD infection. For all I know, they missed a piece."

"You're so paranoid," Ed grumbled.

"Yeah, because knowing you, you wouldn't even notice an infection until it was too late."

"You just want to work on my arm even though it's not automail anymore," Ed snapped. He slapped his knee. "Look, I've still got an automail leg right here if you need to satisfy your perverse desires."

"_Perverse_- okay, whatever, just stop whining and take off your damn shirt. It's only going to take a minute."

Ed looked away. "I don't want to."

"Are you kidding me? It's nothing I haven't seen before. Look, it's not going to hurt or anything, I'm just taking a look. It was my automail, so it's up to me to make sure it's removed properly."

Ed shook his head, still not meeting her eyes. Winry's stomach dropped a little.

"Ed…are you…_hiding_ something from me?"

"What?" Ed shifted his weight side to side. "I…"

Winry put her hands on her hips. "I thought we'd decided to be honest with each other."

Ed froze in his seat at this. Then his shoulders slumped and he let out a sigh. "Okay. Um…look, I haven't bought it up because it's kind of awkward but… a while back something happened to my stomach….uh, please try not to make a big deal out of it okay, it's not as bad as it looks…"

Winry felt her own stomach tie itself up in knots. "Take it off. Now."

Ed let out another huge sigh and jerked his sweatshirt off like he was ripping off a bandaid.

Winry let out a yell. She couldn't help it.

It was a huge scar. As big as the scar from his automail surgery, if not bigger. She could tell from way the wound spiraled that it was some sort of puncture wound- but bigger and messier than a knife wound. A…spear maybe? She shifted her weight shakily and saw there was one on his back too. Something had gone all the way though.

"Ugghhh…" Ed rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Shoulda told you not to scream…"

"What's going-" Al hobbled into the kitchen, his face tauht with concern. His eyes widened when they fell on Ed and then his mouth dropped open. "BROTHER? WHAT… WHAT HAPPENED?"

"AL didn't know about this EITHER?" Winry screamed at Ed.

"It…never came up…" Ed murmured weakly."Look, you guys, I'm fine now, so it's really not a big deal."

"Not a big deal…" Winry said with a hollow laugh. She felt like she couldn't keep standing, so she jerked out a kitchen chair and collapsed in it. She pulled out the chair next to her for Al. He too did the best huffy collapse into a chair he could manage while holding onto a cane. " just got impaled. Not a big deal. Telling us just slipped your mind."

"When did this happen?" Al demanded. "It had to have happened when we weren't together…" he trailed off.

"It was right after when you did that crazy plan where you made it look like Scar took you hostage, Winry. You had just left to warn her and the rest that they couldn't go back to Briggs, Al."

"That's…that's why you went missing…" Al rubbed his temple with a groan.

"Yeah, I was healing up," Ed nodded.

"Tell us exactly what happened," Winry told him, clenching her fists to prevent her hands from shaking. The shock was going to take a bit to wear off.

Ed sighed for like the fifth time. "I confronted Kimblee. I thought I could subdue him without killing him…I cut through the transmuation circle he has on his hands. But he had a philosipher's stone in his mouth.„and he caused a huge explosion. I got caught up in it and uh…kinda got impaled by some fallen rebar…"

Winry inhaled sharply, pressing her hand against her mouth.

Al rubbed his forehead with both hands, his entire body sagging a little."How on earth did you survive? I mean, you obviously weren't rescued by anyone at Briggs, and it would've taken a while to go find a doctor outside the area…and you wouldn't have been able to move…"

"Ahhhh…" Ed said. "Well, Mr. Gorilla and Mr. Lion were down there too, and they were annoyed with Kimblee for exploding them and all…I got some rubble off them with alchemy so they decided to help me out…"

"The lion-man's name is Heinkel," Al interjected. "And the gorilla guy is…uh…well, anyway, you ought to know both their names after working with them so long, shame on you."

"Look, do you want to hear the story or not?" Ed snapped.

"I want to hear it, go on…"

Ed hesitated. "Actually, you know what, it's perfectly fine with me if you don't want to hear the story, so-"

"_Ed_," Winry said dangerously. "Tell us what happened."

"Fine," Ed grumbled. "Well, they were both there, so I got them to pull the rebar out of me, sewed myself up with alchemy, then they took me to a doctor, I got all better, the end."

"Thank goodness they were there…" Winry slumped back in her chair. "That must have been really painful, though. I really can't believe you didn't tell us something this important-"

"Wait," Al said suddenly, his brow furrowing. "May's the only person I know who knows how to use medical alchemy properly. You don't know it at all. That takes way too much power…"

"Oh yeah…welll….I kind of figured out I could use my own life energy to give myself a boost, so I sort of used myself as a philosopher's stone," Ed said with a nervous laugh.

There was a heavy silence. Winry wasn't sure she understood exactly what was going on. "Wait, what does that mean?"

"It means he shaved some years off his life to get power to heal himself," Al said softly, almost disbelievingly.

"Just a couple, I'm sure," Ed said quickly.

"Y-you what…? Winry stared at Ed, who once again couldn't quite bring himself to meet her eyes. "No…you didn't really…"

"Dammit…" Al whispered to himself. He bought his first down on the table. "Dammit!"

"I'm sorry I had to do it, but I really didn't have much choice…I seriously doubt anyone will notice the different anyway, it isn't…"

Al shook his head, ignoring his brother. "You had to deal with all that by yourself…"

"I wasn't technically by myself, come on…" Ed said with what he probably thought was a reassuring smile, but looked a lot more like his usual panic over people feeling unhappiness in his presence.

"It's my fault…" Winry squeaked. She could feel tears starting to burn in her eyes. She closed them, desperately trying to ward a sobbing fit off. "Al would have been there to stop you from doing something stupid if he hadn't had to warn us…it was because of my crazy plan that he had to leave…All those months, we didn't even know you were hurt, we weren't there for you…"

Winry felt something warm and soft cover her hand. She opened her eyes and saw with surprise that Ed had leaned forward and put his hand over his own.

"Winry. You did what you had to do. And I did what I had to do, okay? None of us should feel sad about that."

He looked over at his brother, whose face was still twisted in sadness and frustration, and reached over with his bony right hand and ruffled his brother's mop of hair.

"You're the one who told me never to give up, Al. So I don't want anyone to cry." He moved his hand over to Winry and ruffled her hair too. "The whole reason I told myself I wouldn't let that stupid mistake kill me back then was because I didn't want anyone to have to cry over me…unless it was those tears of joy I promised."

Al blinked at his brother, his clenched fists relaxing. Winry stared at him too, her lip trembling.

"Look," Ed said with a sigh. "I really don't care how long I live. That's not what matters. Look at dad. He lived for such a long time, but he was unhappy for most of it, right? But Granny said he died with a dumbass-lookin' smile."

Ed leaned back with a simple smile of his own, squeezing Winry's hand hard. "Okay, it's kinda hokey, but I feel like…as long as my whole life, I have you guys, and we're all happy together as a family…if that's how it is, I'll have lived a full life. And it won't matter when I die, like Dad, I'll die with a stupid smile on my face."

There was a short pause.

"Brother…" Al said, looking awed.

Ed suddenly flushed, as if he's just realized what he said, and quickly let go of Winry's hand. "What? I'm just saying you guys need to stop being such losers about this okay? You're both stuck with me for a long while either way, so get used to it, dammit! Anyway! This was all none of your business! Can't you let a man eat his sandwich in peace! And—-!"

Winry gave a burbling laugh, hot tears streaming down her cheeks.

"I TOLD YOU I DIDN'T WANT YOU TO CRY!" Ed screeched.

"Tears of joy, dumbass," she said, wiping at her eyes and standing up. "I'm just glad we'll have quality entertainment around for a while yet. I think I'll probably die with a smile on my face too, because I'll be thinking about your stupidity."

"Seconded," Al laughed. "Brother's far too idiotic to die when he's supposed to, I don't know what we were worried about."

"You two-!" Ed sputtered.

Winry impulsively leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. The simple action had the effect of making it look like she'd set his face on fire.

"Thanks, Ed," She said softly, ignoring Al's soft whistle of approval. In a louder voice she said, "Now, if you really DO want to live a full life, you had better let me take a look at that shoulder."

Ed was too flustered to give a smart-ass comeback. It was a nice change.

Winry gave her own little smile as she inspected the scars, running her fingers gently over them. The healing skin was rough and bumpy, but it was holding together. And it was going to hold together for a long time, if Winry had anything to say about it


End file.
